Courtesy of ChipHell we now have a couple of fresh pictures of NVIDIA's first Kepler-powered graphics card, the GeForce (or should we write' GeFORCE') GTX 680. Shot both from above and the back, the incoming card has a black PCB, a dual-slot/single-fan cooler, two (stacked) 6-pin PCIe power plugs, a couple of SLI connectors, and four display outputs - dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.

The GTX 680 is equipped with one GK104 28 nm GPU, and reportedly boasts 1536 CUDA Cores, a 256-bit memory interface, 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM (4 GB models should also be in the works), PCI-Express 3.0, and a TDP of around 190 W. The GeForce GTX 680 is expected to be launched next week, on March 22nd. Its rumored price tag is $549.

This card still confuses me, was this not suppose to be Nvidia's GTX660?
Was their high end card not suppose to smoke the HD7970 by 40%?

And if that is indeed the case and they will instead of calling this one the 660 just name the high end new cards 770 and 780 (and probably rebrand this card to a 760 eventually) then this stuff really seems like borderline price fixing to me.

This card still confuses me, was this not suppose to be Nvidia's GTX660?
Was their high end card not suppose to smoke the HD7970 by 40%?

And if that is indeed the case and they will instead of calling this one the 660 just name the high end new cards 770 and 780 (and probably rebrand this card to a 760 eventually) then this stuff really seems like borderline price fixing to me.

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OF COURSE IT IS PRICE FIXING. That is how a duopoly works. A duopoly is like a monopoly, except there are 2 players instead of one. Still, the market dynamics makes it so that, each company trying to maximize their profits results into a similar price fixing as if they got together and planned it all out.

And yes, that was going to be their GTX 660 but their high end card is having lots of trouble. The GK110 (the "refresh" to the nonexistent GK100 which would have been the GTX 680 which would have beaten the HD 7970 by a hefty margin, will show up when it does). There is no indication of when, so this is it for nVidia this turn. That has got to hurt because in all likelihood it leaves the HD 7970 as the single-GPU king.

cool to see it only uses 2 six pins, but that placement is still really weird to me.

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The inner most connector is rumoured to conflict with the fan placement, hence the stacked power connectors. AMD solved this in the 6900 series by cutting (literally) a corner of the plastic.

Regardless of the approach, I think we can all appreciate smaller cards

And about the pricing. This is quite unfortunate for us consumers. But when I take on a company's point of view, I'd market my product the exact same way. Think about it: why would you price your mid range / performance chip at 200-250€ when it can compete with the current high end (i.e. ~500€).

I guess that is the advantage of being late to market with your products, you can just wait and see what the competition does.

The way I see it, the real fight will be fought with Nvidia's 700 series vs AMD's 8000.

OF COURSE IT IS PRICE FIXING. That is how a duopoly works. A duopoly is like a monopoly, except there are 2 players instead of one. Still, the market dynamics makes it so that, each company trying to maximize their profits results into a similar price fixing as if they got together and planned it all out.

And yes, that was going to be their GTX 660 but their high end card is having lots of trouble. The GK110 (the "refresh" to the nonexistent GK100 which would have been the GTX 680 which would have beaten the HD 7970 by a hefty margin, will show up when it does). There is no indication of when, so this is it for nVidia this turn. That has got to hurt because in all likelihood it leaves the HD 7970 as the single-GPU king.

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Nice to see some competent grasp of economics in these threads for once

And never in my older news posts did I call those markings "GeFORCE". It was more about something that looked like "GTX 570TI" to some people, that caused them to completely dismiss the older picture, which is essentially the same card as the one pictured in this article.

The card was only ever rumored to be the GTX 660ti.... but it has been pictured it was supposed to be the GTX 670ti... Also I would not exactly consider this a huge plus.... because remember even if it was supposed to be the GTX 660ti and we are going on rumors....the real GTX 680 would not have been ready until OCT or NOV.... so this another case of Nvidia rushing something to market like the GTX 480. Not saying yet it will be a bad card but.... what I am saying is that doesn't sit well with me.

i thought it will has something like $300 price tag. so it's true then, that the rumor nvidia will bring $300 mid-end card and crush the $500+ AMD card is another PR BS to screw the sale of AMD card
not a fanboy just spotting something fishy...in the nfishia camp